In Mattew 21:33-45 is recorded Christ’s telling of what is known as the parable of the tenants:
Now listen to another story. There was once a man, a land-owner, who planted a vineyard, fenced it round, dug out a hole for the wine-press and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it out to farm-workers and went abroad. When the vintage-time approached he sent his servants to the farm-workers to receive his share of the proceeds. But they took the servants, beat up one, killed another, and drove off a third with stones. Then he sent some more servants, a larger party than the first, but they treated them in just the same way.
Finally he sent his own son, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ Yet when the farm-workers saw the son they said to each other, ‘This fellow is the future owner. Come on, let’s kill him and we shall get everything that he would have had!’ So they took him, threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Now when the owner of the vineyard returns, what will he do to those farm-workers?”
“He will kill those scoundrels without mercy,” they replied, “and will lease the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him the produce at the right season.”
“And have you never read these words of scripture,” said Jesus to them: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?’
“Here, I tell you, lies the reason why the kingdom of God is going to be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its proper fruit.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables they realized that he was speaking about them. They longed to get their hands on him, but they were afraid of the crowds, who regarded him as a prophet.
Could this be any clearer? The Jewish religious leaders understood the parable instantly, and they would have killed Jesus then and there had they been able to, because Jesus said three things they hated to hear: 1) Jesus was the Son of God, 2) the Jews were going to kill him, just as they had killed previous prophets of God, and 3) that the work of salvation was to be taken from the Jews and given to the gentiles.
In terms of the symbolism of the vineyard, the hedge or wall around the vineyard symbolizes the moral law, or Ten Commandment law, which is what separated Israel from the nations around it. The watchtower symbolizes God’s watchfulness and protection of His people. The winepress symbolizes God’s judgment and wrath against those who reject Him and his messengers (Isa 63:3; Rev. 14:19-20).
In other words, God gave the Hebrew nation tremendous advantages, advantages given to no other people on earth. But Israel did not give God a fair return on His investment. They kept those blessings for themselves, cutting God out of His share.
One of the reasons the Pharisees would have understood the parable is that Isaiah used a very similar parable in Isaiah 5:1-7; Jesus was using the same basic structure found in Isaiah’s parable:
Now let me sing to my Well-beloved A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard:
My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; So He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.
“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?
And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; And break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste; It shall not be pruned or cultivated. But there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds That they rain no rain on it.”
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, And the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; For righteousness, but behold, a cry for help. Isaiah 5:1-7.
There are important differences: Isaiah was prophesying the Babylonian captivity; it was to last for 70 years, during which time the vineyard of the House of Israel would lie fallow and not be pruned or cultivated. When Isaiah said, “I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste,” he is referring to the physical destruction the Babylonians would wreak on Jerusalem.
One of the key differences between Isaiah’s parable and Jesus’ parable, is that in the latter, there is no threat to the structure of the vineyard. The owner (God) is not going to tear down the tower, the hedge, the winepress and all the good things He had built. He’s just going to kill the current tenants and lease the vineyard to others.
So Jesus substantially changed Isaiah’s parable to emphasize the continuity of the vineyard, only with new tenants. What God had given Israel would continue as before: The Ten Commandment law continues, but it is given to the Christian Church; God’s watchfulness and protection continues, but for the Christian Church; God’s wrath against rebellion continues, but it is directed at the enemies of Christ’s church on earth. Even the ceremonial law, the law of the sanctuary and of sacrifices, is still studied by Christians, but to show how it was fulfilled in Christ and how it illuminates the many aspects of Christ’s earthly and heavenly ministries, and His death on our behalf. Nothing was ever wrong with the vineyard, only with the tenants.
Jesus’ parable was really more of a prophecy. Everything Jesus said or implied in this parable came true: Yes, Jesus was the Son of God; yes, the Jews killed him, yes, new tenants, including all who believe in Jesus, both Jewish and gentile, would take over the vineyard, the machinery of salvation, which would come to be called the Christian Church.
Jesus’ listeners correctly guessed what the landowner would do to the current tenants: “He will kill those scoundrels without mercy.” (Phillips translation) The KJV renders it, “He will miserably destroy those wicked men.” Yes, that happened, too. I have elsewhere discussed the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and Ellen White has written eloquently about it the first chapter of the Great Controversy, so we will not go into great detail here, but that part of the prophecy came true along with the rest.
Summarizing the national destruction of the Jews, Ellen White wrote:
“After the destruction of the temple, the whole city soon fell into the hands of the Romans. . . . Both the city and the temple were razed to their foundations, and the ground upon which the holy house had stood was “plowed like a field.” Jeremiah 26:18. In the siege and the slaughter that followed, more than a million of the people perished; the survivors were carried away as captives, sold as slaves, dragged to Rome to grace the conqueror’s triumph, thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheaters, or scattered as homeless wanderers throughout the earth.
The Jews had forged their own fetters; they had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation, and in all the woes that followed them in their dispersion, they were but reaping the harvest which their own hands had sown. Says the prophet: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself;” “for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.” Hosea 13:9; 14:1.